The Amazing Race crowned Jason Case and Amy Diaz the winners of its 23rd season during Sunday night's broadcast of the CBS reality competition's two-hour finale.

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The "Dating Couple" team was the first team to cross the 23rd season of The Amazing Race's finish line in Juneau, Alaska, claiming the $1 million grand prize.

"Exes" Timothy Sweeney and Marie "Reebs" Mazzocchi finished in second place, and "Married ER Doctors" Nicole Jasper and Travis Jasper claimed third place. "Cousins" Leo Temory and Jamal Zadran finished in fourth and were unable to compete in the final leg as a result.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Jason and Amy talked about their The Amazing Race experience and victory. Below is the concluding portion of their interview. Click here to read the first half.

Reality TV World: Looking back on your relationship with Nicole and Travis, do you think you relied on that alliance too heavily? I know Jason, at times you weren't too pleased when Amy would stop to help Nicole and such. I don't know if you think that actually held you back at times or not. Did you really benefit from the alliance I guess?

Amy Diaz: I feel like we wanted this whole experience to be about the entire race. Yes, there's a million dollars, but we also knew that there was only one team that was going to walk away with it.

And of course we hoped it was us, and thank goodness it ended up being us, but we wanted the whole experience. So the making friends, the seeing places -- it was just, for us, becoming really, really close with Travis and Nicole, to us, they're like almost part of the family now.

So we spent Thanksgiving together just a couple weeks ago. So the alliance itself, I don't think we relied heavily on it. The couple of times that I did help her, we knew that it wasn't like we were going to win first place that leg anyway. And as long as we didn't come in last, it wasn't going to make a difference.

We only came seven minutes behind the team that came in first, or 14 minutes from the team that came in first. So that seven minutes that I helped her, helped them stay in the Race, which I'm really happy about.

Jason Case: It was frustrating though. It was frustrating a little for me from the outside watching Amy help her. I mean, because, you don't know what's going to happen. Amy, she's got a good heart and she was trying to do the right thing. But what's going through my head is, "Hey, this is a million dollars right here. It's on the line. We could get lost or something could happen."

I was okay with the alliance, but you just never, never know. A minute could make a difference. But it played out very well for us. It ended up working out, and you know, I couldn't be happier with the result.

Reality TV World: On the subject of Nicole, do you think her decision to try to copy Leo's octave instrument earlier in the Race was appropriate considering it's a race for $1 million or do you think she kind of crossed the line of what's considered ethical and/or acceptable on the show?

Amy Diaz: I thought it was completely fine. The actual clue read that we all had to be assembling within that circle, completing the task. And because there was absolutely no model for us to look at or anything, I imagine [they'd] be doing it in front of each other to look at each other's anyway.

I'm not sure exactly where Leo was during that time. If you watch the show, you can see he may or may not have been inside that circle, because she had no reference. And then you also have to think about -- we call it the curse of being first. They were the first ones there -- no model, no anything.

And then it's like, if you don't keep trying it over and over again, what do you do? There was nothing that said you couldn't look at other people's. I'm pretty [sure], almost positive, that's how that challenge was supposed to be completed -- by looking at each other's.

Jason Case: Yeah, my thought on that is that there were so many worse things in that Race that happened other than that. I mean, the Afghanimals played a very manipulative game that wasn't really shown at times, not as much as it could've been. Certainly Marie and Tim were similar in that fashion with the [stolen] cab.

I mean, so many worse things happened than that thing with Nicole. I thought it got blown up a little bit out of proportion and viewership is maybe taking it the wrong way. Nicole was trying to survive in that situation and help her team survive that leg. It was completely not against the rules and it was legitimate.

Reality TV World: Jason, you just touched upon my next question. It sounds like you believe Leo and Jamal got a fairly good edit considering some of the moves they pulled this season. When I've spoken with other teams, they've complained about things Leo and Jamal did, but viewers never really saw much happen.

Amy Diaz: Yeah, my issue with them was -- I think they thought they were just playing around, but it got to the point where it's like, "You're adults. Act like adults. The lying, the poking fun, the shoving, the pushing when we're running somewhere, it's just not appropriate. We're adults. Behave like one."

And that was our issue with it. You know, every time that they lied, they thought it was funny. To us, it was like, "Okay, after the tenth time you say, 'My wife is pregnant,' to people that are actually vulnerable and believe you, and then you gain something from that, it's like, don't do that to people. We're in their country.

Jason Case: The problem was there was never really any major gain from the way they played the game. I mean, them telling us that Tim and Marie finished eating the cobra when they hadn't even gotten there yet, it only gave us more momentum, more encouragement to go faster.

It's like, they didn't lie about strategic things that gave them any competitive type of advantage, so it didn't make any sense to us. So we just got the feeling in the air that that's just the way that they were, and we have nothing against Leo and Jamal, we like them.

Amy Diaz: Yeah.

Jason Case: But we couldn't understand why they were making those moves. Because those were the reason why they ended up getting U-Turned twice! It had nothing to do with where the placement of the teams were. It was because of the way they played the game.

And to me, that worked against them because they got U-Turned twice. So why they behaved that way when it doesn't give you an advantage -- and the disadvantage was the Double U-Turns there -- we were just confused about the whole situation (laughs) to be honest.

Reality TV World: What are you guys planning on doing with the money you won?

Amy Diaz: A little bit of traveling. We want to go back to a couple of countries that we visited and visit some of the cast and meet their families, and you know, just hopefully save some up and start our future together or continue with a different chapter in our lives.

Jason Case: Exactly.

Above is the concluding portion of Jason and Amy's exclusive interview with Reality TV World. Click here to read the first half. Also, check out our The Amazing Race show page for more interviews with the season's Final 4 teams.


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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